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House passes marijuana legalization

Skraba votes no, Lislegard yes

David Colburn
Posted 4/26/23

REGIONAL- Minnesota moved another step closer to legalizing recreational marijuana for adults on Tuesday when the House approved its version of the cannabis-authorizing legislation on a vote of …

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House passes marijuana legalization

Skraba votes no, Lislegard yes

Posted

REGIONAL- Minnesota moved another step closer to legalizing recreational marijuana for adults on Tuesday when the House approved its version of the cannabis-authorizing legislation on a vote of 71-59.
The House vote fell largely along party lines, although the DFL-authored bill did attract some Republican support.
A companion bill in the Senate was scheduled for a vote Friday, and if differences in the bills can be ironed out in conference committee, Gov. Tim Walz is expected to sign the measure.
“Cannabis will be no longer illegal this summer,” said the House bill’s lead sponsor, Rep. Zack Stephenson, DFL-Coon Rapids, noting that the bill would go into effect in August. “The regulation, rulemaking and licensing process will take many more months. Beyond that you will of course also be able to home grow starting this summer, so it will be a while before Minnesotans can expect to see a dispensary open up.”
An expected House vote on Monday was delayed as the floor debate on the bill didn’t begin until almost 9:30 p.m. and House members pushed consideration of 19 proposed amendments just past midnight, triggering invocation of a House prohibition against deliberations after 12 a.m. to provide for members’ safety.
All but one of the amendments were offered by Republicans and primarily focused on modifications of proposed regulations of the hemp-based cannabis products industry, giving more local control to cities, increase funding for law enforcement, and reducing the potential impact of legalization on those under 25 years of age.
Rep. Nolan West, R-Blaine, proposed an amendment that would have grandfathered in and essentially exempted from the new regulations all hemp-based edibles producers and sellers who began operating under legislation signed into law last summer. West maintained it was unfair to change the rules after hundreds of people invested thousands of dollars and had operated safely for a year. He asserted that certain provisions of the bill threatened the viability of those businesses.
Stephenson responded that the bill had been modified in committee to address some of those concerns, and felt the bill provided appropriate regulation for the industry that wasn’t provided under last year’s bill. He recommended the amendment be rejected, and it was.
Dispensaries will be licensed by the state and cites will be required to provide licenses to those businesses by the bill. Giving cities more local control was the focus of multiple amendments offered by Republicans, who argued that locally elected officials should be able to make decisions that reflect the culture of their communities.
Former Ely mayor and now District 3A Rep. Roger Skraba was among the speakers who argued for more local control on Monday, and he reinforced those remarks before the vote on Tuesday.
“One of my biggest concerns from me being involved in small government, being a mayor, city councilor, is meaningful local control,” Skraba said. “I need to see more on that. I need to see more recognition of the costs for local government in the revenue sharing. Where I’m from, when we get someone that gets arrested we have to drive them 55 miles one way to jail and then back. So, the cost is a lot more in our area, because we don’t have jails everywhere. I don’t know why it’s so hard for me right now. You know, I got four more emails this morning saying please support this, it’s kind of a big deal. But at the same time being a mayor, I understand that local control. I did talk to several communities and their concern is that that is if the businesses get too big, how are they going to manage it? How do they function? Some of our communities don’t have local police, they have the sheriff. So, with that I think I’m leaning more on the red (no).”
Skraba ended up voting against the bill.
One of the more significant proposed changes to the bill, which also failed, was advanced by Rep. Dave Baker, R-Willmar, who tried to increase the legal purchase age to 25, citing concerns over the drug’s effect on brain development in teens and young adults. Those concerns were supported by statements from leading medical and psychological professional associations in the state, but that wasn’t enough to sway the vote Baker’s way.
Rep. Jessica Hanson, DFL-Burnsville, argued that it didn’t make sense to set an age limit higher than that for other things like alcohol and tobacco.
“We allow 21-year-olds to legally consume toxins like alcohol, nicotine and tobacco,” Hanson said. “We allow 18-year-olds to gamble, join the military, work in dangerous facilities and to serve those toxins to other people and, in my opinion, one of the more dangerous ones -- to get married, right? Unless and until we are going to stop all potentially life-altering decisions from happening before 25, we really can’t start with cannabis.”
House members also rejected a Republican amendment that would have placed potency limits on cannabis and cannabis-based products.
Several minor amendments to the bill were approved by members, including:
• A proposal not related directly to cannabis to make fentanyl test strips more widely available, including through retail outlets such as liquor stores.
• Eliminating a requirement for having a second individual in delivery vehicles making deliveries of hemp-based THC edibles.
• Prohibiting the Director of the Office of Cannabis Management from becoming an industry lobbyist if they should leave the position.
• Adding a zero-tolerance prohibition for school bus drivers to drive a bus when there is any physical evidence present in their body of consumption of cannabis or cannabis-derived products. Members rejected a similar amendment for metro transit drivers.
Unless the Senate bill is amended during floor debate, representatives from the two chambers will have at least two major differences to work out in conference committee.
The House version would allow home possession of two pounds of consumable marijuana. The Senate caps the possession amount at one-and-a-half pounds. That eight-ounce difference is the equivalent of 448 half-gram joints.
Also at issue is the level of taxation on cannabis products. The House bill calls for an eight percent gross receipts tax, while the Senate version would levy a 10 percent tax.
“We’re going to have a good discussion about that in conference,” Stephenson said, noting that House Democrats prefer the lower tax rate.